RightScale, the multi-cloud management company, does an annual survey of enterprises and SMBs to identify the trends in adopting the cloud. The State of the Cloud report, which summarizes the findings of the survey, reflects the current pulse of the market. Over the last few years, it has become a credible source for the cloud vendors, analysts and decision makers to understand customer adoption patterns.
Here are the key takeaways for enterprise decision makers from the report:
NEW 2017 #StateoftheCloud Report from #RightScale. Data & analysis from largest survey of cloud buyers & users https://t.co/ZeMNnTDhSB pic.twitter.com/J3fQFMuuBN
— RightScale (@rightscale) February 15, 2017
1. Private cloud growth is declining
As enterprises gain confidence in the public cloud, their investments in the private cloud are falling. Traditional, monolithic workloads will continue to run in the private cloud while contemporary applications will move to public cloud. When compared to last year, the private cloud adoption saw a drop of 5% - from 77% to 72%. Existing private clouds will be extended to the public cloud through a hybrid strategy.
2. VMware is the king of private cloud
Within the private cloud users, VMware is still the most preferred vendor. Between vCenter and vCloud, VMware dominates the private cloud deployments with 60% of adoption. The remaining slots are taken by OpenStack, Microsoft System Center, bare-metal, and Azure Pack. With the general availability of Azure Stack around the corner, Microsoft may see an increase in its private cloud adoption.
3. Central IT owns the cloud strategy
After dealing with shadow IT and a fragmented cloud usage, enterprise IT is stepping up to own the cloud strategy for the entire organization. From selecting the right public cloud to managing the deployments, central IT is now managing the end-to-end governance. This trend is an indication of the confidence CXOs have in the public cloud.
4. Azure is growing at the cost of AWS
When compared to last year, Azure grew from 20% to 34% while AWS remained flat at 57. Within enterprises, Azure has witnessed a rapid growth – from 26% to 43%. AWS has grown 3% to reach 59% from last year’s 59%. Microsoft’s aggressive enterprise push combined with its laser-sharp focus on Azure is helping the company gain inroads. Google Cloud Platform grew to 15% from 10% to retain its third slot.
5. Multi-cloud strategy is the key for enterprises
Enterprises continue to hedge their bets by investing in multiple cloud platforms. Twenty percent of the survey respondents have a multi-cloud strategy in place while only 9% believe in investing in single public cloud. It is common for enterprises to run disaster-recovery sites in a different cloud platform for business continuity. Customers are also choosing cloud platforms based on their strengths. For example, some AWS customers are running their Big Data and analytics workloads on Google.
6. Docker eating into traditional DevOps tools market share
When it comes to DevOps, Docker is high on the agenda. Enterprises are choosing Docker over Chef and Puppet to implement their DevOps strategy. Thirty-five percent of the respondents are already using Docker while 32% are planning to use it as a DevOps tool. While Docker’s adoption rate has grown by 8%, both Chef and Puppet saw a drop of 4% this year.
7. Kubernetes is gaining momentum
Kubernetes, the open source container orchestration engine is moving fast in enterprises. Its usage doubled from 7% to 14% this year. Mesosphere and Rancher, which are alternatives to Kubernetes saw a slight increase of 1% from last year.
8. Amazon ECS is the preferred CaaS
Customers running containerized production workloads in the public cloud prefer Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS). With 35% of the respondents already using it, Amazon ECS leads the CaaS pack. Azure Container Service (ACS), which became generally available in 2016 is also gaining momentum. Google Container Engine (GKE) is used by 8% of respondents. Since Kubernetes is maturing, GKE is expected to see better adoption rate next year.
9. Cost optimization is the top concern for customers
After moving the workloads to cloud, enterprises are now trying to optimize the costs. Twenty-four percent of the respondents, identified as cloud-focused customers with significant adoption of cloud, voted managing costs as the key concern. It's not surprising to see the lack of skill and expertise as the next top concern.
10. Managed databases are the most-used public cloud services
Hosted database services such as Amazon RDS, Azure SQL Database, and Google Cloud SQL are the most used cloud services. Relational database services in the cloud are consumed by 35% of respondents. Interestingly, push notification services are used by 32% of respondents, making it the second top service. Despite the hype, Machine Learning is used only by 11% of the respondents.
The AWS/VMware partnership that was announced late last year will significantly impact the enterprise adoption. Microsoft’s Azure Stack, the Azure-compatible private cloud will become generally available this year. These two events will certainly influence the state of the cloud survey in 2018.
